Surprise! Employer Mandate Delayed Until After 2014 Midterms

First Democrats wrote Obamacare to make sure that the painful parts would start after the 2012 election, now Team Obama looks to make sure that the employer mandate kicks in after the midterms. Kudos to The Hill for pointing this out in their headline.

The ObamaCare employer mandate requiring businesses to provide their workers with health insurance will be delayed by a year, the administration said Tuesday in a stunning announcement.

Delaying the requirement until 2015 is an enormous victory for businesses that had lobbied against the healthcare law.

It also means that one of healthcare reform’s central requirements will be implemented after the 2014 midterm elections, when the GOP is likely to use the Affordable Care Act as a vehicle to attack vulnerable Democrats.

In a White House blog post, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote that the administration believed it needed to give employers “more time to comply with the new rules.”

As some Tweeters have pointed out, what about the delay for individuals? Consider, the Supreme Court just offered their ruling on DOMA, which noted that everyone should be treated equally under federal law in striking down part of DOMA. Does this not seem like inequality? Others note that, as Obama put it, it’s the law

Now why would you expect Obama and the Dems to follow the law they passed?

“This allows employers the time to test the new reporting systems and make any necessary adaptations to their health benefits while staying the course toward making health coverage more affordable and accessible for their workers,” Jarrett wrote Tuesday evening.

Jarrett also wrote that the delay would help in “cutting red tape and simplifying the reporting process.”

HHS and other federal government agencies under Obama’s rule have failed time and time again to meet their deadlines, plus they keep adding thousands and thousands of pages of regulation to what was already a 2,000 page bill.

What this also means is that the deep pocketed businesses will have to wait an extra year before they can file lawsuits. Remember, what the SCOTUS ruling meant (thanks, John Roberts) was that individuals/enities had to have standing to file a suit, whereby they have actually been hit with the effects of Obamacare. It’s easier for big companies to file and maintain suits than individuals.